Shaman (Cole)

by Noah Gordon

  Locally, the Democrats were more united, and had once again chosen John Kurland, the Rock Island attorney, to challenge Nick Holden for his congressional seat. Nick was running as the nominee of both the American party and the Republicans, and he was stumping hard for Lincoln, hoping to ride in on the presidential bandwagon. Lincoln had welcomed Know Nothing support, and it was why Rob J. declared that he couldn’t vote for the man.

  Shaman found it hard to concentrate on politics. In July he heard from the Cleveland Medical College, another refusal, and by summer’s end he’d also been rejected by the Ohio College of Medicine and the University of Louisville. He told himself he needed only one acceptance. The first week in September, on a Tuesday when Lucille waited in vain, his father rode home with the mail and handed him a long brown envelope whose return address said it came from the Kentucky School of Medicine. He took it out to the barn before he ripped it open. He was glad to be alone, because it was another failed application, and he lay back in the hay and tried not to succumb to panic.

  There was still time to go to Galesburg and enroll in Knox College as a third-year student. It would be safe, a return to a routine in which he’d survived, in which he’d done well. Once he had his baccalaureate degree, life could even be exciting, because he could go east to study science. Maybe even go to Europe.

  If he didn’t go back to Knox, and he couldn’t enter medical school, what would his life be?

  But he made no move to go to his father and ask to be returned to college. He lay in the hay a long time, and when he got up, he took a shovel and the barrow and began to muck out the barn, an act that in itself was a kind of answer.

  Politics were impossible to avoid. In November Shaman’s father freely admitted that when he went to the polls he’d voted for Douglas, but it was Lincoln’s year, because the Northern and Southern Democrats split the party with their separate candidates, and Lincoln won easily. It was small consolation that Nick Holden finally had been turned out of office. “At least Kurland will make us a good congressman,” Rob J. said. In the general store, folks wondered if Nick would come back to Holden’s Crossing now, and resume the practice of law.

  The question was put to rest within a few weeks, when Abraham Lincoln began to announce some of the upcoming appointments that would be made under the new administration. The Honorable Congressman Nicholas Holden, hero of the Sauk wars and ardent supporter of Mr. Lincoln’s candidacy, had been named United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He was charged with the task of completing treaties with the Western tribes, and furnishing them with suitable reservations in return for peaceful conduct and forfeit of all other Indian lands and territories.

  Rob J. was cranky and depressed for weeks.

  It was a tense and unhappy time for Shaman personally, and a tense and unhappy time for the nation, but much later Shaman would look back at that winter with nostalgia, remembering it as a precious country scene carved by skilled and patient hands and then frozen in a crystal: the house, the barn. Icy river, snowy fields. The sheep and horses and milch cows. Each individual person. All of them safe and together in their proper place.

  But the crystal had been knocked from the table and already was falling.

  Within days of the election of a president who had run on the premise that they shouldn’t own slaves, the Southern states began moving toward secession. South Carolina was hotly first, and United States Army forces that had occupied two forts in Charleston harbor moved into the larger of the two, Fort Sumter. At once they were under siege. In quick succession, state militias in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi seized United States installations from outnumbered peacetime federal forces, sometimes after fighting.

  Dear Ma and Pa,

  I’m going off with Mal Howard to join up with the South. We don’t know exactly what state we’ll enlist in. Mal kind of would like to go to Tennessee, to serve with his kinfolk. It don’t matter much to me, unless I can get to Virginia and say hello to our own kin.

  Mr. Howard says it’s important for the South to field a whopper army to show Lincoln they won’t be trifled with. He says there’s not to be a war, it’s just a family quarrel. So I’ll be back in plenty time for spring lambing.

  Meantime, Pa, maybe I’ll be given a horse and gun of my own!

  Your loving son,

  Alexander Bledsoe Cole

  Shaman found another note in his room, scrawled on a torn piece of brown wrapping paper and weighted down on his pillow with the mate to the pocketknife his father had given him:

  Little Brother,

  Take care of this for me. I wouldn’t want to lose it. See you directly.

  Bigger

  Rob J. went at once to Julian Howard, who admitted in uneasy defiance that he’d driven the boys to Rock Island in his buckboard the previous evening, right after chores. “No need to get all riled, for goodness’ sake! They’re grown-up lads, and it’s just a small adventure.”

  Rob J. asked him at what river wharf he had left them. Howard saw how Rob J. Cole stood close to him at his full bulky height, and felt the chill and contempt in the uppity doctor’s voice, and he stammered out that he had left them off near the Three-Star Freight Transport pier.

  Rob J. rode straight there, against the slim chance he could bring them home. If there had been the low temperatures of some other winters, perhaps he’d have had more luck, but the river wasn’t icebound and traffic was heavy. The manager of the freight company looked at him in amazement when he asked if the man had noticed two youths looking to work on one of the flatboats or rafts heading downstream.

  “Mister, we had seventy-two craft off-load or take on cargo at this pier yesterday, and that’s in slow season, and we’re just one Mississippi freight company of many. And most of those boats hire young men who walked away from a family somewheres, so I don’t hardly take notice of any of em,” he said, not unkindly.

  Shaman thought the Southern states seceded like corn popping in a hot skillet. His red-eyed mother spent her time praying, and his father went on his home visits without smiling. In Rock Island one of the feed stores moved as much stock as possible into the back room and rented half its space to an army recruiter. Shaman drifted into the place once himself, thinking that perhaps if all else failed in his life, he could be a stretcher-bearer, because he was big and strong. But the corporal who was signing up men raised his eyebrows comically as soon as he learned Shaman was deaf, and told him to go home.

  He felt that with so much of the world going to hell, he didn’t have much right to be troubled about the confusion in his own life. The second Tuesday in January his father brought home a letter, and then another one that Friday. His father surprised him, because Rob J. knew he’d recommended nine schools, and he had kept track of the nine answering letters. “That’s the last of them, isn’t it?” he said to Shaman after supper that night.

  “Yes. From Missouri Medical College. A rejection,” Shaman said, and his father nodded without surprise.

  “But this is the letter that came on Tuesday,” Shaman said, and he took it from his pocket and unfolded it. It was from Dean Lester Nash Berwyn, M.D., of the Cincinnati Polyclinic Medical School. It accepted him as a student on the condition that he successfully complete the initial term of study as a trial period. The school, affiliated with the Southwestern Ohio Hospital of Cincinnati, offered a two-year program of study leading to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, four terms in each year. The next term was to begin on January 24.

  Shaman should have felt the joy of victory, but he knew his father was seeing the words “on condition” and “trial period,” and he prepared himself for an argument. With Alex gone, he was needed on the farm, but he was determined to escape, to grasp his chance. For many reasons, some of them selfish, he was angry that his father had allowed Alex to run away. While he was about it, he was angry at his father for being so damned certain there wasn’t a God, and for not realizing that most people just weren’t strong enough t
o be pacifists.

  But when Rob J. looked up from the letter, Shaman saw his eyes and his mouth. The knowledge that Dr. Rob J. Cole wasn’t invulnerable entered him like an arrow.

  “Alex won’t be hurt. He’s going to be all right!” Shaman cried, but he knew it wasn’t the honest assessment of a responsible person, of a man. Despite the existence of the room with the ivory-assed dummy, and the arrival of the letter from Cincinnati, he understood it was only the worthless promise of a desperate boy.

  PART FIVE

  A FAMILY QUARREL

  January 24, 1861

  45

  AT THE POLYCLINIC

  Cincinnati sprawled larger than Shaman had expected, the streets teeming with traffic, the Ohio River ice-free and busy with boats. The intimidating smoke of factories rose from tall chimneys. Everywhere, there were people; he could imagine their noise.

  A horse-car trolley took him from the riverside railroad depot straight to the promised land on Ninth Street. The Southwestern Ohio Hospital was composed of a pair of red-brick buildings, each three stories high, and a two-story wood-frame pesthouse. Across the street, in another brick building surmounted by a cupola with glass sides, was the Cincinnati Polyclinic Medical School.

  Inside the school building Shaman saw shabby classrooms and lecture halls. He asked a student for the dean’s office and was directed up an oak staircase to the second floor. Dr. Berwyn was a hearty middle-aged man with white mustaches and a hairless head that gleamed in the soft light of the high and grimy windows.

  “Ah, so you are Cole.”

  He motioned Shaman into a seat. There followed a short talk on the history of the medical school, the responsibilities of good doctors, and the necessity of rigorous study habits. Shaman knew instinctively that the greeting was a set piece, recited for every new student, but this time there was a finish just for him. “You must not allow yourself to be intimidated by your conditional status,” Dr. Berwyn said carefully. “In a sense, every student here is on trial and must prove himself a worthy candidate.”

  In a sense. Shaman would have wagered that not every student had been informed of his conditional status by letter. Still, he thanked the dean politely. Dr. Berwyn directed him to the dormitory, which proved to be a three-story wood-frame tenement building hiding behind the medical school. A dormitory roster tacked to the hallway wall informed him that Cole, Robert J., was billeted in room Two-B, along with Cooke, Paul P.; Torrington, Ruel; and Henried, William.

  Two-B was a small room entirely filled by two double bunks, two bureaus, and a table with four chairs, one of which was occupied by a plump youth who stopped writing in a notebook when Shaman came in. “Halloo! I’m P.P. Cooke, from Xenia. Billy Henried’s gone to get his books. So you must be either Torrington from Kentucky, or the deaf fellow.”

  Shaman laughed, suddenly very relaxed. “I’m the deaf fellow,” he said. “Do you mind if I call you Paul?”

  That evening they watched one another, drawing conclusions. Cooke was the son of a feed merchant, and prosperous, judging from his clothing and belongings. Shaman could see he was accustomed to playing the fool, perhaps because of his portliness, but there was shrewd intelligence in his brown eyes, which missed little. Billy Henried was slight and quiet. He told them he’d grown up on a farm outside of Columbus and had attended a seminary for two years before deciding he wasn’t cut out for the priesthood. Ruel Torrington, who didn’t arrive until after supper, was a surprise. He was twice as old as his roommates, and already a veteran medical practitioner. Apprenticed to a physician at a young age, he had decided to attend medical school to legitimize his title of “Doctor.”

  The other three students in Two-B were cheered by his background, at first believing it would be an advantage to study alongside an experienced physician, but Torrington arrived in a bad mood that never changed as long as they knew him. The only bed that was unclaimed when he arrived was the top bunk against the wall, which he didn’t fancy. He made it obvious that he scorned Cooke because he was fat, Shaman because he was deaf, and Henried because he was a Catholic. His animosity welded the other three into an early alliance, and they didn’t waste much time on him.

  Cooke had been there several days and had gathered intelligence which he shared with the others. The school had a faculty of generally high repute, but two of its stars shone more brightly than any others. One was the professor of surgery, Dr. Berwyn, who also served as dean. The other was Dr. Barnett A. McGowan, a pathologist who taught the dreaded course known as “A&P”—anatomy and physiology. “They call him Barney behind his back,” Cooke confided. “They say he’s responsible for failing more medical students than the rest of the faculty put together.”

  The next morning Shaman went to a savings bank and deposited most of the money he’d brought with him. He and his father had planned his financial needs carefully. Tuition was sixty dollars per year, fifty dollars if paid in advance. They had added money for room and meals, books, transportation, and other expenses. Rob J. had been happy to pay whatever was necessary, but Shaman stubbornly had held the idea that since his medical education was his own plan, he should pay for it. In the end they agreed that he would sign a note to his father, promising to repay every dollar following his graduation.

  After leaving the bank, his next errand was to find the school’s bursar and pay his tuition. It didn’t help his spirits when that official explained that if Shaman should be dismissed for academic or health reasons, his tuition money could be only partially refunded.

  The first class he attended as a medical student was a one-hour lecture on the diseases of women. Shaman had learned in college that it was essential to reach every class as early as possible, in order to sit close enough to lip-read with a high degree of accuracy. He showed up early enough to gain a place in the front row, which was fortunate, because Professor Harold Meigs lectured rapidly. Shaman had learned to take notes while watching the lecturer’s mouth instead of the paper. He wrote carefully, aware Rob J. would ask to read his notes to learn what was happening in medical education.

  His next class, chemistry, revealed that he had sufficient laboratory background for medical school; this cheered him and stimulated his appetite for food as well as for work. He went to the hospital dining room for a hasty lunch of crackers and meat soup, less than wonderful. Then he hurried to Cruikshank’s Bookstore, which serviced the medical school, where he rented a microscope and bought his books from the required list: Dunglison’s General Therapeutics and Materia Medica, McGowan’s Human Physiology, Quain’s Anatomical Plates, Berwyn’s Operative Surgery, Fowne’s Chemistry, and two books by Meigs, Woman, Her Diseases and Their Remedies and Diseases of Children.

  As the elderly clerk was totting up his bill, Shaman glanced away to see Dr. Berwyn in conversation with a short glowering man whose neat beard was sprinkled with gray, like his mane of hair. He was as hirsute as Berwyn was bald. They were obviously deeply engaged in argument, although evidently they kept their voices low, because none of the people nearby paid them attention. Dr. Berwyn was half-turned from Shaman’s sight, but the other man faced him squarely, and Shaman read his lips more by reflex than out of any desire to eavesdrop.

  … know that this country is going to war. I am well aware, sir, that this incoming class is forty-two students instead of the usual sixty, and I know well that some of these will run off to battle when the study of medicine gets too tough. Especially at such a time we must guard against lowering our standards. Harold Meigs says you have accepted some students whom last year you’d have rejected. I am told that among them there is even a deaf mute …

  Mercifully, at that point the clerk touched Shaman’s arm and showed him the amount due.

  “Who is the gentleman talking with Dr. Berwyn?” Shaman asked, the mute finding his voice.

  “That is Dr. McGowan, sir,” the clerk said, and Shaman nodded, gathered up his books, and fled.

  Several hours later, Professor Barnett Alan McGowan sat at his
desk in the dissection laboratory of the medical school and transcribed notes into permanent records. All the records dealt with death, since Dr. McGowan seldom had anything to do with a living patient. Because some people looked upon death as a less-than-happy environment, he’d grown accustomed to being assigned working places that were out of the public’s eye. In the hospital, where Dr. McGowan was chief pathologist, the dissection room was in the basement of the main building. Although it was convenient to the brick-lined tunnel that ran under the street between the hospital and the medical school, it was a drab place notable for the pipes that crisscrossed its low ceilings.

  The medical-school anatomy laboratory was in the rear of its building, on the second floor. It was reached from both the corridor and a separate stairway of its own. One tall window, curtainless, let leaden winter light into the long narrow room. At one end of the splintery floor, facing the professor’s desk, was a small amphitheater, its rising tiers of seats placed too close for comfort but not for concentration. At the other end stood a triple row of students’ dissecting tables. In the center of the room was a large brine tank full of human parts and a table bearing rows of dissecting instruments. The body of a young woman, completely covered by a clean white sheet, lay on a board placed out of the way on sawhorses. It was the facts concerning this body that the professor was entering into the records.